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Update: Our book club was stuck on the same old arguments every month
We kept having the same circular debates about whether an 'unlikeable' main character ruined a book (you know, the usual stuff). I suggested we try something different last month with 'The Secret History' and assigned each person a specific character to defend, no matter what. It forced everyone to look at the book from a totally new angle, and we actually had a real discussion for once. The debate went for over an hour, which is a record for our group. Has anyone else tried a structured role-play trick like this to get past surface-level opinions?
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nina_hall1mo ago
From being totally broke and left out" - wait, hold up. That actually blew my mind a little. I never thought about Bunny like that. I always just saw him as this annoying rich kid leeching off everyone. But now you got me thinking about how his whole desperate act was probably just him being scared of going back to being nobody with nothing. That's honestly kind of sad when you look at it that way. I bet half the books I wrote off because the character was "annoying" actually have that same kind of hidden depth I was too lazy to dig for. You really changed how I see that whole story with just that one point.
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ninal912mo ago
Oh wow, that's such a smart idea. I used to be the person who'd just say a character was too mean and write the whole book off. But being forced to defend, like, Bunny from that book (what a mess he was) made me see how his greed came from being totally broke and left out. It stopped being about if I liked him and started being about why he was even in the story. It totally changed how I read now.
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